Published 9:13 pm, Thursday, December 19, 2013

Average is a lot better than horrible, but not as good as spectacular. The Great Danes will play Yale, which is coached by former UAlbany player (1982-86) and assistant coach (1990-95) James Jones, Friday night in their final home game of the calendar year. They will close out 2013 with a game at Drake in Des Moines, Iowa on Monday and then play at Pittsburgh on New Year's Eve.

More Information

Yale (5-5) at UAlbany (5-5)

When: 7 p.m. Friday

Where: SEFCU Arena, Albany

Radio: WOFX (980 AM)

UAlbany has won four of its games away from SEFCU Arena. The Danes have defeated Siena at Times Union Center and have road wins at Rider, New Jersey Institute of Technology and, most recently, Brown.

UAlbany has dropped two of three home games. Last Saturday, the Danes fell to Colgate, which made 13 of 28 shots from 3-point range.

"We definitely need to be more consistent," said junior forward Sam Rowley. "We can look great, and we can look terrible. We definitely have not played our best yet. We are still sort of finding ourselves. It has been a little chaotic with guys getting hurt."

Injuries have been a recurring theme for the Danes. Brown said Thursday that three players — reserves Anthony Odunsi, Levan Shengelia and Luke Devlin — are all banged up.

Odunsi, a 6-foot-4 junior guard, will likely be redshirted after suffering a concussion on Nov. 25. He hasn't been in the lineup since. Odunsi, who has been on the court for only25 total minutes in five games, showed slight improvement when he met with a doctor on Monday, but has still not been cleared to return.

"We are 90 percent sure we are going to redshirt him," Brown said.

Shengelia, a 6-9, 250-pound junior forward, has a dislocated shoulder and he has two options.

He can either play through the pain or he can have surgery, which would end his season.

Brown said that right now, the player wants to try to play. Shengelia could play in one more game, Brown said, and still be allowed to be a redshirt.

Devlin, one of four co-captains on the roster, will play his senior season as he has for much of his collegiate career: in pain. The 6-8 Devlin has back issues for the second time in his career. There has been no discussion of him redshirting.

Brown said Devlin will give him what he can when he can.

"He will be a straight day-to-day, game-by-game, half-by-half, media timeout-by-media timeout," Brown said. "There will be nights when he won't be able to anything and there will be nights when he can give us 10 minutes."

Brown had hoped this team might be one of the deepest he has ever had in his 13 years at UAlbany.

Now, he will have to rely on his starters to play major minutes. Three of them — Peter Hooley (35.0), DJ Evans (31.9) and Rowley (31.0) — are averaging more than 30 minutes per game.